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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



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ON A 



Foundation for Religion 



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BOSTON : 

GEO. H. ELLIS, PRINTER, 101 MILK STREET. 

1879. 



CONTENTS. 



Introductory, 5 

Gratitude, u 



Submission, 



*5 



Prayer, 23 

Faith and Hope, 30 

God, * 3 6 

Conclusion, 45 



ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



There are some of us at the present time who can no 
longer assent to many of the intellectual positions of Chris- 
tianity. We do not so much attack as feel ourselves unable 
to occupy or defend them. We have little sympathy with a 
belligerent infidelity or a dogmatic atheism, but rather a nat- 
ural reverence for what the world has counted holy ; and in 
many Christian doctrines we find not a little to sympathize 
with and respect. Our inability, however, extends far. We 
are children of this world and of this age. While not seeking 
for imperfections and errors in Scripture or the teachings of 
the Church, historical criticism will not allow us to deny their 
existence; and, regarding Scripture and Church as human 
products, we cannot, though finding in them much that is 
true and helpful, look to them as authorities and rest upon 
them, least of all in matters of involved theological and phil- 
osophical speculation. Modern science has, moreover, given 
us a new view of the constitution of things. The common 
Christian conception has been that the world, in the entire 
circle of its phenomena and forces, is created and dependent ; 
the order and adaptations of means to ends that we witness 
are due to the ordering and designing intelligence of the 
Creator ; and duty has its sanction as being a revelation and 
command of His will. But science makes us think of the 
world in and of itself as a whole. It does not so much deny 
the existence of God as find him, in the above-mentioned 
sense, unnecessary. All the signs of dependence in the 
world about us it believes can be adequately accounted for 



6 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

without going out of the circle of known or knowable phe- 
nomena and forces. Each individual existence is dependent, 
but not on something apart from the whole sum of individual 
existences, but on such other individual existences themselves. 
All together they make up a whole, but we cannot call this 
whole dependent, and such language would be self-contradic- 
tory ; for if dependent, the whole must depend on something 
beside itself, and that something would thus stand out be- 
yond, and would have to be included before the true concep- 
tion of the whole would be reached. The world, so taken, 
we cannot then call an effect, or predicate of it a beginning : 
these are terms applicable to the parts ; the whole stands 
self-centred and complete, comprehending all effects and 
beginnings within itself. 

Further, the order of the world seems to us not a thing 
conferred, but inherent and necessary. If matter were essen- 
tially inert and forceless, and once so existed, it would be a 
natural supposition that the wonderful combinations of ma- 
terial particles in the crystalline and vegetable and higher 
orders of being resulted from the controlling hand of a 
superior Intelligence. But this is a gratuitous and un- 
founded conception. Matter is attended with forces of 
various kinds, and is perhaps in the last analysis itself force, 
that needs only certain conditions to enable it to manifest its 
active power. And these forces we regard as competent to 
the production of all the varied phenomena of the world ; 
and as we must think of them as always existing, we have no 
occasion to suppose that they had an author, or were consti- 
tuted or endowed so that they might produce their results. 
The smooth pebble we find on the beach cannot be other 
than smooth ; the crystal is due to the co-operation of forces 
that could issue in no other than just these regular forms. 

And the adaptations we see, we are constrained to believe 
have a similarly natural origin and necessity. The prevailing 
hues of nature are fitted to the eye. What discomfort should 
we suffer if the grass and the foliage of the trees were of a 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

bright red color ! But does it not occur to us that the eye is 
as it is just because of the actual character of its environ- 
ment, and that if this should change, the eye would of itself 
seek to newly adapt itself ? If man were indeed a new crea- 
tion suddenly introduced into the world, the harmonies of 
his being with the external constitution of things could hardly 
be accounted for save on the supposition of some intelligence 
in the Power that had introduced him. But the aspect of 
the matter changes when we think of him as a development, 
a new and higher form of forces already existing. Then we 
see that he could have become what he is only by means of 
these harmonies ; that they are not adventitious, but a part, 
and a necessary part, of his very being. The adaptations 
remain, — we simply give to them a different interpretation, 
and assign a different origin. It is sometimes said that both 
interpretations may be true ; that design and necessity may 
coexist ; that efficient causes do not exclude final causes : 
and the examples of human workmanship are referred to, in 
which both conspire to produce the result. And the possi- 
bility of this we may freely concede. But when we ask for 
actual evidence, the difference between the products of man's 
hand and the works of nature is manifest. In the former 
case, we know that thought and design exist ; in the latter, 
we do not. Indeed, the very considerations which are fre- 
quently said to induce us to assign the watch to an origin in 
design would seem to negative such a necessity in regard to 
nature's products. For, it is said, the watch is too compli- 
cated and too visibly adapted to human use to be the result 
of nature's forces, which are blind and aimless. When, how- 
ever, with a thought of the claims of theology, we turn to the 
eye, which no human hand has shaped, and the action of the 
natural forces in producing which we can almost trace, we 
forget the basis of our former reasoning, and connect with 
the forces a superhuman intelligence and design. Our con- 
necting of design with the watch has, however, to our minds, 
a better basis than the conception of natural forces as blind 



8 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

and aimless, — a conception for which we have as little war- 
rant as for the opposite one, that they act with intelligence 
and design such as we possess. Really, we know in the first 
place that the watch has a human origin, and, knowing this, 
we naturally see in the complicatedness of its structure and 
its adaptedness to human ends a manifestation of human 
intelligence. But if we could trace it to purely natural (we 
mean non-human) causes, — if we could see it growing as the 
flower grows, or could have evidence that it had so grown in 
the past, — the matter would stand differently. And in the 
case of anything we find in a locality or as the remains of a 
time in which we did not know that man existed, our view of 
it depends upon whether we can suppose it due to the opera- 
tion of natural forces, or must assign to it a special human 
origin. In the latter case, we ascribe any adaptedness to 
human ends that we may find in it to design : in the former, 
though the adaptedness exists, we feel no such compulsion. 
For, as before said, there are instances of adaptation not of 
human origin, and they are often more striking and in every 
way greater than any that are the result of human con- 
trivance. The world is worthy of an origin in intelligence, 
and is, indeed, beyond all that our intelligence could ever 
have planned. But the question is, Do we know of any intel- 
ligence beside our own ? do we know, even, of any origin to 
the world, in a total sense ? have we any reason to believe 
there is a Power, aside from it, which created and constituted 
it? If so, then in the adaptations of the world we could see 
design ; but if not, thev must stand of themselves Insufficient 
to prove their supernatural origin, yet having a firm place in 
the world's order, and testifying to a Power in the world more 
than human, and greater, subtler, we might almost say wiser, 
than our intelligence. And we apply the same method to 
the phenomena of our moral nature. We can no longer sup- 
pose conscience to have an exceptional Divine origin, nor 
invest it with supernatural sanctions. It is a product of ex- 
perience ; as we may say. the voice of the accumulated 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

experiences of men in the past as to right and wrong con- 
duct ; and it may be added, is thus not without a certain 
natural dignity and authority. 

The conception of personal Deity is then lost to us, not 
through any arbitrariness of ours, not that we have any 
hostility to it, not even that we have any positive arguments 
against it ; it may, for all our knowledge or lack of knowledge, 
be true : but simply from a discovery that the facts upon 
which it has ordinarily been based have, to our minds, been 
misinterpreted. It has faded away, just as we can imagine 
the ancient mythology faded away to the minds of the later 
Greeks and Romans. But this conception lies at the basis 
not only of Christianity, as commonly interpreted, but, to the 
minds of many, of all religion. It is not an uncommon 
opinion, even among the thoughtful, that without faith in a 
personal God religion is impossible. How can we be grate- 
ful, it is asked, if all comes to us not from a free-will, but of 
necessity ? What reasonable basis is there for submission in 
trial and in the face of death, save that these are ordered by 
a Supreme Intelligence ? How can we pray, save as we have 
a distinct faith in a personal Hearer and Answerer ? And 
what meaning is there in faith or basis for hope, save as 
Infinite Wisdom and Love are ruling the world ? Accord- 
ingly it is probably not infrequently the case that along with 
doubts as to the Divine personality, there comes the aban- 
doning of any effort to cherish religious feeling. Duty in its 
ordinary human references is by no means disallowed, — 
honor, kindness, charity, courtesy, and much that makes life 
worth living, still exist ; but relations such as men call relig- 
ious are gradually lost out of sight, if not, indeed, deemed 
practically impossible. Our inquiry then is, Must this be so ? 
Is religion for us, with our altered intellectual conceptions, 
no longer possible ? And by religion we do not mean any 
new thing. Nor do we seek to identify it with moi ality in 
the ordinary narrow significance of that term. We have 
rather in mind certain sentiments which reach out beyond 



10 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

merely human objects, which have formed a part of all the 
religions of the world, and which, though far from being the 
whole of religion, will yet be generally allowed to be them- 
selves distinctively religious, — we mean gratitude, submission, 
prayer, faith, and hope. These have usually been directed to 
personal objects ; and hence our question is. Are they really 
dependent upon those objects ? In the eyes of many they 
are, and so the foundation of religion is placed in an involved 
and what is to us a doubtful intellectual conception. 

It is our purpose to show that these sentiments may arise 
even in the absence of such conception : that so far as they 
are dependent upon knowledge, it is knowledge that is sure 
and immediate : but that they have a deeper rooting in the 
heart and moral life of man, and thus form a foundation on 
which we may surely rest, despite any purely speculative 
difficulties. 



GRATITUDE. 

It cannot be denied that the obligation to thankfulness is 
heightened in our minds by the consciousness that the gift 
is the manifestation of the love of some person. In our 
ordinary moods, what comes to us in the regular course of 
things excites no particular emotion. For a bunch of 
flowers given us by a friend we return our thanks ; but for 
the same flowers found along the road-side we hardly think 
of being grateful. Plainly this difference of feeling would 
to a great extent vanish, if we could believe and realize the 
common Christian view that everything in nature is the 
direct gift of the love of God. And on the other hand, we 
cannot deny that the order of nature may be dwelt upon in 
such a hard, unfeeling way, its beauty and blessedness so 
overlooked, that hardly any sentiment in return can be 
awakened in us. Are then we, who cannot accept the 
former view, shut up to the latter, and for the blessings 
that are not from a human hand can we have no thank- 
fulness ? 

The world is not of our creation. We find ourselves in it, 
and have vital relations to it ; but it existed long before we, 
and our relations are rather of dependence than origination. 
It — and by the world we mean the sum total of forces, 
human included — brought us into being, and it does not 
leave us to ourselves, but continually sustains us. What 
should we be, not only without parents, but without light 
and air and food? It is evident that the "we" only has 
meaning, as there isa" not-we," and that the latter is, as it 
were, constantly entering into and constituting us. We 
indeed do something for ourselves ; but is it not for the 
most part simply appropriating, or shaping and preparing 
for use, elements already in existence ? 



12 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

We gather the ripe grain, but have we made it ripe? We 
provide for ourselves food and clothing, but do we make 
them or simply give form to materials which great Nature 
has already furnished ? And the power with which we do 
what we do, though we call it our own, — is it of our crea- 
tion ? Whence come the strong hand and arm, the thinking, 
planning brain ? So far from being due to us, the mystery 
of their formation we can hardly fathom. 

Now in the consciousness of this dependent relation to the 
Universe there arises a peculiar feeling. Ordinarily we do 
not possess this consciousness in any vivid way. Indeed, 
when all goes smoothly with us, we hardly separate ourselves 
from the world about us, and are scarcely aware that we are 
not self-centred. But when we think, and, more, when we 
realize, that we are thus dependent, that we have nothing we 
have not received and verily are what Powers greater than 
we have made us, — more than thoughtful, are not the springs 
of feeling touched, are we not grateful ? Yes, not only are 
we created and sustained, but the world teems with more 
'than we need. There is beauty that delights the eye and 
stirs the heart, — the earth is fair, the heavens are radiant; 
and we have thus a sense of the largeness and generosity of 
the World, that cannot content itself with a mere intellectual 
recognition, but breaks out in all the joyous thankfulness of 
the heart. We may not know the ultimate origin of all these 
blessings, but we do not need to know ; we are thankful for 
what they are and that they are. We need not be distinctly 
conscious of an object to which our gratitude is directed ; it 
is more a state or temper of the heart than an address to 
such an object. To be sure, if we do associate a personal 
Author with the blessings, our gratitude may take on a per- 
sonal form and utter itself in grateful language; but without 
this, it may be real and deep. If we see flowers by the way- 
side and have neither admiration nor thankfulness, it is not 
simply that we are not conscious of a personal Source whence 
they come, but that we are indifferent and thoughtless ; but 



GRATITUDE. 1 3 

if our heart feels their beauty and we reflect that they belong 
to an order not of our creation, an order that has created us 
and is thus prodigal in its blessings to us, we need no more 
to stir our thankfulness. And in such a mood, we do not 
ask, To whom may we be grateful ? Gratitude itself is all. 
It need make no difference, indeed, if we discover that the 
flowers have had a natural origin, that their substance is 
common dust, that their colors are due to common air and 
light, that all the beauty of nature and blessings of life are 
not of chance formation, but are in accordance with law and 
wear an aspect of necessity. It is not the whence or the 
how, but the realities of themselves, for which we are grate- 
ful. If necessity is Mother of all things, feeling will not 
therefore check itself, but rather say, Fair and good and 
gracious is Necessity. We have said that the order of the 
world might be dwelt upon in such a way as to have little 
effect upon the feelings. But it is not so much what is posi- 
tively presented as what is left unpresented, that is the 
cause of this. The order may be real, but it is not the whole 
reality ; and it is the beneficent relations of the order to us 
that move us. It is thus that the scientific mood is not 
identical with the religious. Im the former we view the 
world simply as an object, quite abstracting ourselves ; but 
in the latter, at least in its first stages, it is just the relation 
to ourselves that interests us. Even if we adopt the theory 
of the personal origin of the world, we are not thereby made 
grateful. And even if to the bare intellect the extremest 
mechanical conception were the true one, though we deemed 
the course of events not only necessary, but the world abso- 
lutely blind, aimless, heartless, — yet if by any chance a hum- 
bler, less dogmatic mood should come to us, and we should 
feel life coming to us we know not whence, and pulses of joy 
beating within not of our creation, if the world should then 
seem fair and life blessed, we could hardly restrain some 
feeling akin to thankfulness. And this would not be substi- 
tuting sentiment for reason, but would be simply reason leav- 



14 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

ing its abstract and objective mode of view, and looking at 
things concretely and in their relation to us. 

Gratitude, being thus connected with our immediate and 
experimental knowledge, and independent of theories as to 
the hidden nature and origin of things, may be safely left to 
its own impulses. Ordinarily it may be without utterance, 
simply a quiet sentiment coming to us now and then, when a 
moment's reflection realizes to us our dependence and the 
world's bounty. In some, and of a certain temperament, it 
may indeed feel utterance unnecessary and disturbing rather 
than helpful. And again, in more ardent temperaments, it 
may break forth in psalm and joyous canticle. 

Plainly, then, we cannot consent to the opinion that grati- 
tude without recognition of the Divine personality is unmean- 
ing. * We can readily see how it may be the opinion of the 
dogmatist who would forcefully impose upon us this recogni- 
tion, or of one in the first despair of unbelief, before he has 
recovered himself and learned to trust in nature, or of the 
man indifferent to religion, who would seek a logical pretext 
for his indifference. But if we are true to our best instincts, 
we cannot allow it. Obligation is not limited to persons. 
Wherever something is received, there is a duty in return. 
We have no claim upon the mighty Nature which brought us 
forth : we are, so far as we are concerned, her free products, 
we are surrounded by her opulence, we are sustained by her 
bounty, and we neither can nor care to stay the filial grati- 
tude that rises in our hearts. 



SUBMISSION. 

But the world is not wholly made up of things for which 
our first impulse is to be grateful. The sun, indeed, shines, 
and for all ; but sometimes it shines too much, and at other 
times not enough, to correspond with our immediate wants. 
The rain descends upon the evil and the good, but at times 
it fails to bless either, and privation for some is the result. 
The air is common, yet it is sometimes moved with storm 
and tempest that bring destruction in their way. The earth 
is a solid footing for all, yet here and there it may open and 
swallow us up. The seas are generous highways, yet count- 
less precious human lives are buried beneath them. And 
what of human life? Do we have all that we want? Are 
we not often denied cherished hopes and baffled in our en- 
deavors ? Not only what we want, but what we seem really 
fitted for, does not hard circumstance sometimes keep away 
from us ? And then, what talents are misdirected, what 
capacities undeveloped ! What gropings in the dark are 
there, what longings never to be met, what ideals luring us 
on yet ever eluding our grasp ! How often are evil propen- 
sities developed and good intentions nipped in the bud ! 
How often is generosity met with coldness ! How do sen- 
sitive souls suffer, where the rude and coarse are light and 
bantering ! Friendship is sweet, yet to be almost friendless 
is sometimes a good man's lot. And how do pureness and 
truth sometimes awaken all the demons of ill-will in the low 
and vile ! Home is dear, yet to how many is the word only 
a vague memory or perhaps even a blank ! And all homes 
are sooner or later broken, into them all some sorrow enters, 
death takes one member after another. Yes, to ourselves 
comes, at his own time, the fatal messenger, and from all that 
is bright and fair and real to us takes us away. 



1 6 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

What shall we say of these things ? They are not surely 
as we would have them, and on first thought our feeling is 
far from one of gratitude. They do not, however, counter- 
balance the positive blessings of life before mentioned. The 
world is not more evil than good, or equally one and the 
other ; we believe it is on the whole and for most persons 
good. Drought, tempest, pestilence, earthquake, disaster at 
sea, are not the rule but the exception. We all wish for 
more than we have or are, but in most cases the actual of 
itself is an abundant ground for thankfulness. Misfortune, 
accident, sickness, come to us, but, save in rare cases, they 
serve to darken only temporarily what are in the main tol- 
erably happy lives. Sorrow, trials of mind and heart, bur- 
dens of soul come to us, but, save where they are cherished, 
we cannot believe they become natural and habitual to more 
than a few. Death comes, but shall we not therefore be 
grateful for life ? There may be rare instances in which life 
is hardly a blessing, its evils outweighing its good ; but to 
the vast majority, even to those whose good and ill are 
nearly balanced, we believe life is something dear: they 
would not willingly give it up • while it lasts they have hope ; 
and even the past with its mingled shadow and light they 
would hardly lose wholly out of their remembrance. And 
further, let us beware of saying that the evils we have men- 
tioned are absolutely evil. For how can we know this ? 
Evil they are in relation to us ; as such they are real. But 
that they are evil in every relation can only be known if we 
know ever} 7 relation ; and hence such an assertion savors 
more of haste and passion than of calm reason. How do 
we know but that in some of the relations with which the 
wide universe abounds these evils may be good ? yes, how 
can we deny that in relation to us, at some time and in some 
way, they may prove to have been not without blessing? 
What other attitude, then, is so natural as one of submis- 
sion ? For, in the first place, what avails our rebellion ? We 
rebel against what is stronger than we. For we do not refer 



SUBMISSION. 17 

to imaginary evils or to such as are only possible in the 
future ; we must do all we can to prevent evil, all we can 
to repair or mitigate it ; we refer to the actual, to what is 
left after all our effort and all our sympathy have spent 
themselves, and to future ill, only as it is clearly seen to 
be inevitable. And what are we in the face of reality ? If 
our strong hand and will cannot avail, of what use are our 
petulance and rebellion ? What of honor, what akin to 
bravery, is there in allowing such feelings ? Does not the 
strong man say rather, If I cannot remove fate, I can bear 
it ; easy and weak it is to repine, — I will show my strength 
by quietly submitting? 

But further, let us remember that every event, whether in 
external nature or in human life, has its place in the uni- 
versal order. The world is all of a piece ; nothing stands 
isolated ; everything, however small or however evil, has rela- 
tions reaching out into infinity. This that now distresses 
me is the result of forces and conditions that are essential 
to the integrity of universal Nature. Nothing comes of 
chance or wilfulness or caprice, unless it be a direct inflic- 
tion of human hands. By reflection we must thus unlearn 
any rebellion. We see that it means narrow-mindedness 
and selfishness. How can I demand that all things revolve 
about me and conspire for my good ? Has, then, the world, 
that stretches out into infinity and goes on to eternity, no 
better end than me, or even than man, as at present consti- 
tuted ? And have I no universal sympathies, no piety ? My 
ill may be merely mine and another man's good. Or it may 
be the ill of one generation, and some coming generation 
may be the better for it. Or it may be common to all 
humanity and in all time ; eveiv if so, it may be good in 
wider relations, and in any case it is in some way necessary 
to the constitution and course of things. The individual can 
have no ambitious claims. All that. he has he has received, 
and he may well be thankful. But because there are limita- 
tions, because of his own life there is beginning and ending 



1 8 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

and mingled weal and woe in the interval between, shall he 
cry out ? No ; as all individual existence is transitory and 
subject to the action, now favorable and now unfavorable, 
of forces other than itself, the pious heart asks in favor of 
itself no reversal of the universal law. Rather is the spirit 
of piety just the opposite of this. Its inquiry is, not how 
much can /wish for and attain, but what is the law and will, 
so to speak, of the Powers above me ? It passes out of the 
regards that centre in self, and seeks to conform itself to 
the Universal order. Piety is devotion, loyalty, and links 
man in self-surrender and obedience to a supreme object 
of affection. I have desires, it is true, and they are some- 
times strong, and it seems hard to put them down j but I 
remember the Powers greater than myself, and in whose 
hands I am, and I feel there is no single private good so 
great as that of conscious harmony with them. I had rather 
receive from them than grasp too eagerly for myself ; and if 
they deny me, though it be hard, I will still loyally say, Their 
will and not my own be done. To receive with thankful- 
ness is indeed good, but there is involved in it no strain, — it 
furnishes no test of the strength and completeness of our 
devotion. But when we no longer receive, when denial is 
meted out to us, and what we would have is made impossible 
and what we already have is taken away from us, then, if we 
can loyally bear and submit, we are not far from the height 
of piety. 

And further, this submission is not without a happiness of 
its own. It is, in the first place, a giving up of happiness, a 
resigning of what one wishes to the ordering of a Higher 
Power ; but, as if in return for such high virtue, there comes 
in upon the soul, gradually it may be, yet surely, a peace 
and joy such as the actually meeting of one's wishes could 
hardly have produced. We do not attempt to explain this, 
and would not be understood to ascribe any special super- 
natural origin to the feeling; it no doubt arises naturally. 
We only refer to the fact. It is a realitv in the moral order. 



SUBMISSION. 19 

— which, along with the physical, goes to make up the entire 
order of the world, — that along with submission, and the 
more so the more complete submission is, there goes a happi- 
ness second to none we can possess, and before which our 
ordinary pleasures and satisfactions may seem poor and 
superficial. Yes, this happiness may even rise to thankful- 
ness. One whom we cannot more admire for intellectual 
subtility than for saintliness of spirit* has written, after 
recounting the various blessings which naturally awaken 
gratitude : — 



, " Yet, Lord, in memory's fondest place 
I shrine those seasons sad 
When, looking up, I saw Thy face 
In kind austereness clad. 

" I would not miss one sigh or tear, 
Heart-pang, or throbbing brow ; 
Sweet was the chastisement severe, 
And sweet its memory now." 

Sucli is the transmuting power of the human spirit ; so is ill 
patiently and humbly borne turned into good and blessing, 
awakening a noble thankfulness. And though to the height 
and serenity of such an experience we may not all of us rise, 
yet in some measure and degree are we not acquainted with 
it ? Has not sorrow, when not rebelled against, softened 
and subdued our hard and worldly hearts ? Has it not given ^Jr**"" 
us new insights and deeper sympathies ? Have we not there- 
after seemed to have a finer ear for the " still, sad music of 
humanity," and felt a deeper and tenderer love for our strug- 
gling, often weary and stricken, fellowmen ? And if we have 
rightly taken the trials and disappointments of human life, 
if we have met them humbly and bravely, have not they in 
turn given us fresh strength and courage, made us see that 
life and happiness are more than meat and raiment or any 
outward blessing, made us feel the largeness of the Divine 
resources, and trust the more in that mighty Heart which 

*John Henry Newman. 



20 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

never takes one good away without holding out a higher and 
a better ? ^Tiat ill, indeed, can do violence to the submis- 
sive spirit ? There are many evils which I cannot conquer, 
but there are none to which I cannot submit. Sickness, pain, 
remorse, bitter failure, may come to me, — let them come ! 
Yes, even death may lose its sting and the dark grave be 
shorn of its victory ; for we may covet no single good of life, 
and not life itself, so much as harmony with the world's 
order. Our wishes are particular and finite, but our submis- 
sion makes us one with all that is or may be. and lifts us, as 
it were, out of our human restlessness into the infinite calm 
of God. If, then, we would have a sure and even happiness. 
I know not how we may so well secure it as by cultivating 
the submissive heart. We may not deny our desires : we 
may cherish those which are pure and worthy and seem to be 
in the line of the world's Providence. But beneath all par- 
ticular desires there may be an undercurrent, a deep desire 
stronger than they all. Our special wishes may change, and 
some may be as short-lived as the wavelets of a stream : but 
we are not disturbed : our truest and deepest selves move 
ever silently and strongly on in their appointed course. If. 
as we go on in life, we meet joy and gladness, if circum- 
stances smile upon us and opportunities to realize all we 
wish are given us. we are yet not elated, but humble and 
conscious of greater obligations. But if at some time 
the joys of life are taken from us. if the heavens seem to 
have lost their light and kindness, if Providence seems fate 
and fate stern and hard, we shall none the less accept this, 
content to do without joy, willing to go on without the favor 
of outward skies, and joining hands with fate with no grief 
or repining. And if we continue in such brave submission. 
sooner or later time will prove that we have not really for- 
saken joy. but have found better joy ; we shall feel that 
Heaven's grace without we might well relinquish to find the 
sweeter and Diviner grace within, and fate shall become 
transfigured, and in it we shall almost think we see the face 
of God. 



SUBMISSION. 21 

Plainly we cannot surrender the truth and naturalness of 
all this because we fail to give an affirmative answer to a 
great philosophical question. For as it shapes itself to our 
minds, the personality of God is such a question. We are 
not the better for believing in it, or the worse for failing to 
believe, and, as with any other problem for the intellect, 
should decide in regard to it on solely intellectual grounds. 
Disbelief may indeed sometimes spring from moral causes. 
The world may seem to some persons so full of evil, the 
onward course of things so hard and ungracious, their own 
lot so poor and mean, that they cannot believe a God of wis- 
dom and love is ordering all ; and so a willing submission 
becomes impossible. But with such disbelief we have little 
in common, and indeed regard.it as less true than the oppo- 
site positive belief. For the error contained in the latter, if 
error it be, is superficial and relates only to a matter of 
philosophical interpretation ; while the truth contained in 
it — namely, that the w r orld is at heart good and naturally 
awakens thoughts of Infinite Love and Wisdom — relates to 
matter of fact, is vital and profoundly practical. If we 
deemed the order of the world inconsistent with an origin 
in such Wisdom and Love, neither could we be rationally 
or willingly submissive ; for it would thus be below our 
highest thought, and, however great and powerful, we could 
not help viewing it as beneath us. But the world is rather 
in our conception worthy of the highest origin, and that we 
do not so explain it is simply that the whole matter of an 
origin is a perplexing problem to us. Its actual character, 
however, as good, as fitted to the highest growth of our 
spirits, and often as better than our own wishes and wiser 
than our own thoughts, we assent to ; it is, indeed, the basis 
of all that we have said. 

And in this connection we may see some meaning in the 
opinion that faith in God has a moral basis. For God is to 
many not a metaphysical conception, but the Good, the good 
around us and above us and not of our origination : faith in 
Him is a sense of good and blessing diffused through ail 



22 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

things. And such perception is conditioned on our expe- 
rience. If we are self-willed, the world may not seem good 
to us, for it often goes against our will ; if we make great 
demands, we ma)' think it stern and cold, for it is often deaf 
to them ; if we sin, we may think it even remorseless and 
cruel, for in some way it will punish us. But if our hearts 
are set on the right, if not self-will but conformity is our vital 
thought and motive, then all things seem to turn to our ac- 
count : good beams upon us from what is dark and evil to 
most men ; trials have a hidden strength, disappointments an 
unexpected blessing ; and for all of duty that we do there is 
a rest and joy of mind that makes us feel the world is on our 
side. It is in this sense that the secret of the Lord is with 
those who fear Him, and that to the pure in heart is granted 
the beatific vision. And we should think this view of the 
world, instead of being regarded with hostility, would be wel- 
comed as consistent with, and indeed favorable to, Christian 
Theism. Surely the intelligent Christian does not base our 
duty of submission on the fact that God made the world, but 
that He made it good ; and here we, though fci© looks upon it 
in its derivation and we as simply matter of fact, have a 
common ground. Goodness and what we must call reason 
are incarnate in the world or they are not ; if not, or if we 
cannot in some measure see them, then faith in Divine love 
and intelligence is impossible ; but if they are, then, whatever 
our speculative belief or unbelief, we have a reasonable basis 
for submission. And the latter recognition is ours. The 
dark side of the world exists indeed to us as to the Christian, 
but as he does not regard it as inconsistent with the ordering 
of Divine love, so is it to us not untinged with brightness. 
We too surrender happiness, and feel that there is another 
religion than that of nature and natural thankfulness : for us 
there is the strait and narrow way, the way of self-sacrifice 
and renunciation ; but this to us also is not loss, but gain ; 
life is not made less, but grows greater and richer ; and the 
narrow way brings us up to mountain-tops, face to face with 
heaven's sun and with an infinite horizon. 



PRAYER. 

There are desires which beat hard against opposing reality. 
The desires for health, for wealth, for social standing, for 
intellectual culture, may for some persons and from various 
causes be impossible of gratification • and, though plainly in 
themselves legitimate, when thus discovered to be impossible 
it is not wise nor in the spirit of piety to cherish them. But 
there are other desires meeting with no such insuperable bar- 
riers. The desire for purity of personal character, that we 
may be faithful, unselfish, above ill-will, jealousy, and mean- 
ness \ the desire for truth in the opinions we form, that we 
may be open-eyed and free from prejudice ; the desire for the 
welfare of our fellow-men, prompting us to generous efforts 
in their behalf ; and, above all, the desire to be conformed to 
the order and course of things, that we may do whatever 
comes to our hand, that we may bear patiently whatever 
burden is assigned us, that we may take our place faithfully, 
whatever it be, humble or great, beset with danger or com- 
monplace, as true soldiers in the onward march of humanity, 
— these are desires which we may never disallow, and which 
the more we cherish and give free course to, the worthier we 
feel ourselves to be. 

But to attain these objects of desire we feel ourselves at 
times insufficient. As our own characters we did not volun- 
tarily make, as inward bent and outward circumstance con- 
tributed much, so now we cannot voluntarily change them : 
feelings that we do not will or wish rise xip in us unawares ; 
circumstances are still often unfavorable and have their effect 
before we know it. Nor are we naturally open-eyed ; our 
minds are full of prejudices, inherited or of chance formation, 
and even when we will we cannot wholly divest ourselves of 
them. How small a part, too, can ours be in furthering the 



24 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

welfare of humanity ! how do conditions and deep forces, 
over which we have little control, restrain and retard us ! 
and how often are we tempted to be impatient when we see 
how slow is the onward course of things, to be rebellious 
when too great a duty or too heavy a burden is given us, or 
to be petulant when necessity forces us to give up doing and 
turns us into idle spectators ! 

Surely, then, the objects of our desires are in other hands 
than our own. And if the desires are strong, if we feel them 
to be right and cannot put them down, what is more natural 
than the cry for help ? We look to the Powers above us and 
pray that they will give us pure hearts and open minds, that 
they will do for our fellow-men what we fail to do, that they 
will give us strength for the part in life they have assigned 
us, and make us brave and humble and trustful. Such 
prayers are as natural almost as our breath ; we cannot deny 
them, save as we either stifle our desires or deny the reality 
of Powers greater than ourselves. We may find many diffi- 
culties in understanding how prayer may be answered or is of 
any avail ; but when the aspiration, the longing, arises within 
us, nature gets the mastery of us, and before we have time to 
think of the difficulties, prayer is going up from our hearts. 
Logical considerations are not the origin of prayer, and they 
are impotent to undermine it ; they may sometimes strengthen, 
but they do not create, and if in some cases they seem to un- 
dermine, it is not so much their influence as the absence of 
the deeper moral impulses. We do not pray for answers to 
prayer ; if we are in such a calculating mood, we cannot pray : 
we pray because we must, because our needs are great and 
we are conscious of our own inadequacy to meet them. If 
we do not understand how our breathing sustains the life, 
how the fine, impalpable air in answer to it enters into us and 
becomes health and color and vivacity, shall we therefore 
cease to breathe ? Why, then, on the ground of our igno- 
rance shall we cease to pray? Oh, we are in larger Hands 
than our own ! And when shall we learn to yield to the wise 



PRAYER. 25 

Nature that lies within us ? when shall we see that our poor 
intellects but play on the surface of what passes their knowl- 
edge ? and when shall we have a larger logic, which shall not 
prescribe to nature, and allow this and reject that, but base 
itself on the whole, and be only anxious that it overlook not 
or fail to justify one single element of the Divine totality ? 

And as to the logical difficulties, what are they ? Natural 
law, it is said, is invariable and cannot be broken. We may 
pray, but there are actual forces, which with their conditions 
produce all the varied results of the world ; and prayer cannot 
disturb these forces. And this is as true in the mental and 
moral as in the outer world. Force is constant, law is supreme 
everywhere ; so that spiritual blessings are determined apart 
from prayer just as much as physical. The truth of all this 
in a general way may be conceded ; the error lies rather in 
the application, to the matter in hand, and especially in the 
superficial conception of prayer involved. Prayer, then, is 
not a force : a hand, a limb, a plant, a stone, — these are real, 
they stand for real forces ; but prayer is but a word, a whis- 
per in the wind. Can our hearts allow this ? What is more 
real within us than our desires, — what more determines the 
outward actions, our relations to .those about us, our whole 
life, than these secret inward desires ? In truth, rather than 
unreal, they are the most real, because the most original, 
forces in human life. But prayer is desire in its most intense 
form. If we are indifferent, we may not pray • but if desire 
growvT strong, prayer is hardly less than a necessity. Here, 
then, we have an anomaly, — other forces, even unmoral and 
inanimate, are real and have their effects ; but prayer, stand- 
ing for one of the deepest forces we know of, is isolated and 
effectless ! 

But it may be said : Prayer is in its nature an appeal to 
other force than itself ; so far as it produces its own effect, 
we allow its reality and worth, but it is the supposition of its 
influence on anything beside itself that we object to. But 
the action of forces is various. One force acting upon 



2.6 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

another may not produce the effect out of itself, but liberate, 
as it were, the energy stored up in the other. When a bar- 
rier is taken away from a body of water, an amount of energy 
is displayed by the rushing stream quite surpassing the mere 
force that lay in the barrier. When you are in distress and 
go to a friend for sympathy and help and get them, you 
cannot be said to create those blessings. Yet such sympathy 
and help are real, and in them we do not recognize any vio- 
lation of law or inconstancy of force. What, then, must the 
objector say ? Alan can hear and answer us. but the Powers 
above man, who created him and made him all that he is, 
cannot ; they who made the ear cannot hear, from whom the 
human heart comes cannot sympathize, who made the strong 
hand and arm are impotent and bound. Can we assent to 
this ? does it appeal to reason any more than satisfy the 
heart ? We know little indeed of the Supreme Power : we 
may not assert that it has intelligence such as we have, or a 
moral nature, resulting from the long experiences of our own. 
But to assert it to be unintelligent and without heart or free- 
dom, — is it not equally, yes, more presumptuous ? We thus 
do violence to natural reverence, and that which is really 
above we place practically beneath us. No ; if God is not 
as man, it is not that he is less, but more, than man. If he 
has not a nature as ours, he has one greater ; not without 
intelligence and love and freedom', but possessing that of 
which our minds and hearts and wills are but poor and 
shadowy manifestations. We cannot, then, deny the impulses 
of our souls on the ground of these difficulties. We may not 
indeed solve all the problems they involve, but we can know 
enough to prevent our feeling any forceful hindrance to the 
free play of our natures. 

But are we quite without experience as to the effect of 
prayer? In the sphere of external nature we may speak 
diffidently, as of events indeed in human life not our own. 
But we may readily conceive a possibility : if the world is the 
realization of a Divine thought, the desires of men may have 



PRAYER. 27 

had an influence in the Divine determining of the course of 
events ; these events may be linked together by necessity 
and yet as a whole have a free origin, — as a man may build 
a house and make a special arrangement out of regard to the 
desire of some one who is to live in it, the whole process of 
constructing being yet in strict accordance with mechanical 
laws. And even if we fail to assent to so distinct a concep- 
tion, yet, trusting as we must in some responsiveness in the 
Heart of things to our own desires, we cannot deny that it 
may act, not in conflict with mechanical laws, but from a 
stand-point above them and through them, as we ourselves do. 
To deny that there have been answers to prayer for physical 
or other non-personal blessings, is more than we can do ; the 
tracing up of their natural origin and showing their necessity 
does not suffice. But in the sphere of our own inward ex- 
perience, what prayerful heart cannot give positive testimony ? 
When we have humbled ourselves and sought Divine strength, 
have we not received it? When life's duties and burdens 
seemed hard, and life itself poor and scant in blessing, has 
not all sometimes, after a prayerful mood, been changed, the 
duties become easier, the burdens lightened, and cheerfulness 
and hope awakened within us ? Have we not ourselves tried 
it, — by force of will to put down unworthy elements in our 
nature, and been unsuccessful ; and then, in some quieter, 
humbler mood, simply opened our souls to heavenly influence 
and felt all that we longed after silently becoming a part of 
us ? So true is it, that, " Left to ourselves, we sink and 
perish ; visited, we lift up our heads and live." 

We may not know what God is, but this we do know : that 
a Spirit sometimes comes to us which moves us to all that is 
true and good ; it takes away our selfishness and awakens 
impulses to all that is generous and noble ; it melts away our 
hardness and makes us tender and gracious ; it divests our 
minds of prejudice and passion, and, if we will only yield to 
it, guides us into all truth ; it nerves us for all arduous duty ; 
if we are dejected it lifts us up, and if we are lonely and 



: ; ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

heartstricken it solaces us and gives us almost a sense of 
Divine companionship. We may call this Spirit what we will. 
— Xature, World-soul, Holy Ghost, God. The name matters 
little, but the reality is all ; and to be filled with it, we can 
call no less than the supreme blessing of human life. But 
what are the conditions of its coming? For come it docs . it 
is not ourselves. — it visits us. And further, it is not subject 
to our control : we may not compel its presence by word of 
command or act of will. 

"The Spirit bloweth and is 
In mystery our soul abic^ 

3 : far as we can detect the law of its action, does it 
:: -eem to come in response to our humbler, prayerful 
moods, when we are yearning after better things, when, far 
from feeling self-sufficient, we open the doors of our souls 
and entreat sweet heaven's grace and light to enter in : and 
does it ever come to us when we are self-elated, contented 
with what we are, without longing or aspiration? 

Prayer, then, is not so much a matter for us to speculate 
upon as one upon which our higher moral life depends. If 
we are prayerless, and of course I mean not simply to out- 
ward appearance but as an inward reality, it must be that we 
are unconscious of our Divine connections, that we are isolat- 
ing ourselves and becoming self-centred, that desire is fading 
out of our hearts, that we are forgetting to what heights of 
character and what depths of experience we may reach, and 
are becoming content with what is sordid and commonplace. 
And to be prayerful, — what is it but to know and measure 
ourselves as we really are ? to believe in higher things than 
we ha ttained to? to open our souls and receive 

the Spirit of all good and blessing into them ? 

And we cannot give up all this because we fail to assent 
to the personal conception of the Supreme Powers. Only 
deeper causes can make it impossible for us to pray, as 
deeper causes are at the root of prayer itself. Desire is the 



PRAYER. 29 

fountain of prayer, and if it fails we cannot pray, however 
favorable our intellectual conception ; and if it wells up 
within us we shall pray, though the conception be appar- 
ently unfavorable. For we take no account of the view that 
the Powers of the world are positively malevolent, — one 
that in health and sanity we can hardly entertain ; and that 
there are no Powers greater than ourselves, only the utterly 
thoughtless can affirm. We do not overlook the fact that 
the personal conception is the one most favorable to prayer, 
or deny that when first it loses its hold upon the mind 
prayer becomes difficult and even perhaps apparently un- 
meaning. There must be time for all changes, and readjust- 
ment is a gradual process everywhere ; but when we do 
recover our balance and get back to nature, we see that the 
springs are still there, that our desires we cannot stifle, and 
that only as we take an unworthy view of the whole order of 
things can we forbid their spontaneous rising and utterance. 
And when we give our prayerful impulses free play, we see 
how naturally they give a personal form to their object. 
And so there comes to us the discovery that feeling, so far 
from being limited by conception, is sometimes the source 
of conception. We may not indeed deny our impulses or 
refuse to allow the natural forms which they create. " In 
your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity ; 
yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them 
heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape 
and color." * Yet we may not make of this temporary re- 
sult of impulse a permanent element in our creed ; the intel- 
lect must shape the latter and the forms of impulse may 
themselves change, and what is natural in connection with 
one stage of culture may be no longer so in connection with 
another. But the real nature of prayer cannot change ; not 
so long as man has desires reaching out beyond himself and 
beyond his own power to satisfy, as he realizes that he is a 
part and a dependent part of the great Whole, and does not 
deny the natural bond of faith that is in him. 

* Emerson. 



FAITH AXD HOPE. 

Partly as involved in the experiences already mentioned 
and partly as bred by them, there arise faith and hope. 
Faith is hardly so separate and distinct a thing as grati- 
tude or submission or prayer; it rather accompanies and 
gives tone and color to these special experiences, and is 
brought into separate existence only when we resolve them 
into their elements. It is not entirely born of our individual 
experience, and often our first experiences tend to check it ■ 
but it may be the result of unnumbered experiences of men 
in the past, — as it were .their subtle essence and breath. It 
is not identical with knowledge, though it is often a spur to 
knowledge ; it tends rather to surpass knowledge, and with- 
out restraint becomes credulity. It has more than one stage. 
In the child it is almost unconscious ; we call it innocence. 
Yet plainly it is real : the child does not believe that any one 
can harm it ; it looks out confidingly on scenes before which 
we rather tremble : it knows nothing of the world or its 
forces or of man, and yet it looks for good and not evil 
everywhere. This good, too, is not general, — for of such a 
conception it is not capable, — but personal, good in relation 
to itself. But as life advances and knowledge grows, it sees 
that the world contains mutually hostile forces, and that 
many things are evil in relation to itself ; faith then receives 
a check, and the child begins to gauge the world according to 
knowledge, and sometimes its experiences may be so trying, 
circumstances may so thwart and frown, that it almost gives 
way to despair. But a total loss of faith is probably rare : 
most men believe there is more of good than evil ; their 
trust as shown in their relations in life is in general more 
than their knowledge : and if not now and in these circum- 
stances, then in the future, the good thev want they believe 



FAITH AND HOPE. 3 1 

will come. And with growing thoughtfulness our faith im- 
pels us to ask what these evils really are, — whether after all 
they are not in some way good. And reflecting that fire and 
water, which often injure human life, are also necessary to it, 
that storms purify, that wars not only devastate but in the 
end often civilize, — finding, too, in our own experience how 
hardships have increased our powers of endurance, how dis- 
appointments in one direction have led to successful efforts 
in another, how suffering and sorrow have quickened our 
nobler sympathies and enlarged our knowledge of the world, 
— we do not feel faith becoming less, but growing greater ; 
we become conscious of larger meanings in the conception 
good, and, from what we know trusting for what we do not 
know, we have a dim but glad surmise that all things in the 
wide universe are in some relation helpful. And we may 
take one step further. Lifting ourselves gradually out of a 
merely personal consciousness and sympathy, we may so 
continue until the Universe itself in its entire actual order 
becomes the supreme object of our regard. Though, after 
all the good we have discovered, there remains some evil 
which we cannot turn into good^ and the impossibility of 
whose being so converted we may allow, we will not on that 
account cry out against the universe or presume to say that 
it was Detter if that evil did not exist ; but rather better is 
it that it does exist, better is a world with mingled shadow 
and light than one of unclouded brightness. And such evil 
may not merely be for our contemplation, but may seize hold 
of us. Sickness may prostrate us and death stand before 
us ready to cut us off from all we longed and were prepared 
to do, and we may see no good to ourselves or to any one 
else in our untimely end, and there may be none : yet life 
has been a blessing, every day of it we are thankful for, and 
the end itself is not arbitrary, but has its place in and goes 
to make up the world's order ; and the World is more than 
we, its ways are greater than our ways, and we still give it 
the loyalty and allegiance of our hearts. Evil viewed in 



32 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

these world-relations is no longer evil • the untimely comes 
at its own best time : for we have no private good or desire, — 
the world and we are one. And thus it is that faith comes 
full circle ; all things are now good, not only in general but 
in relation to us, and we return, though with consciousness 
and enlarged vision, to the simple confidingness of the little 
child. 

But it may be asked, Does not faith involve more than this, 
— not only that we call the world good, but that we attribute 
its goodness to the love of an intelligent Creator ? The latter 
conception may not be scientifically verifiable, but is it not 
a characteristic of faith to accept what cannot be proved, 
and thus, though we cannot know God, ought we not to 
believe in Him? Surely here are two meanings of the 
word faith, which we must distinguish. On the one hand, 
it is something intellectual ; we have conflicting evidence in 
regard to a matter and cannot know for certain ; however, the 
mass of evidence seems to incline in one way, and we say, 
Though we do not know, we yet will so believe. Belief is the 
better word for such a state of mind. But faith, as we use 
it, is primarily moral : like belief, it is not knowledge and 
tends to surpass knowledge, but it is a state or temper of 
the heart rather than an intellectual condition. It may have 
an influence upon the intellect, but to attempt to positively 
construct a theory of the world would be quite deserting its 
proper function. And what is apt to be forgotten is that 
the supposition of Supreme Love and Wisdom creating and 
ruling the world is such a theory, involving conceptions of 
dependence and causation and design, of which faith knows 
little, and in regard to which it would be idle for it to affirm 
or deny. Faith is concerned simply that the view of the 
world be not an unworthy one. For, being a sort of loyalty, 
it cannot consent that its object be placed beneath itself. If 
the world must have an origin, faith will distrust any one 
assigned that seems low ; and if the choice be between love 
and malice, or wisdom and blind chance, it will not hesitate 



FAITH AND HOPE. 33 

on which side to range itself. If the goodness of things 
were wrapped up with any theory in such a way that to 
doubt the theory would be to cast an imputation on that 
goodness, then would faith unhesitatingly accept it. But 
some of us do not feel the necessity of supposing that 
there was an origin of the world such as was believed in 
in former times \ to us the world stands firm of itself. And 
further, we do not see that the goodness of things calls for 
such an origin, — why to suppose it necessary and intrinsic 
is not as worthy a view as to regard it as contingent and 
derived. We are equally concerned to believe the best 
things j our difference from the past results simply from 
a difference in intellectual conditions. The spirit of the 
Christian belief we may still sympathize with ; for, an origin 
of things being taken for granted, the highest conceivable 
origin was assented to ; the best attributes of our own 
nature, stripped of all limitation, were ascribed to the 
Author of the world. And if our faith cannot take this 
form, it is not that we would think less worthily, but that 
our conception of the constitution of things is changed, and 
that moreover we do not know that intelligence and love are 
the highest possible things, that there may not be something 
overlapping and dwarfing these as we can think of them, as 
these surpass the instincts of creatures below man. 

Faith being thus a sentiment, and as such entitled to a 
free development, though not to a taking upon itself of the 
functions of the intellect, let us consider its relations to the 
sentiments and experiences before spoken of. Plainly it is 
involved in our submission and our prayer. We give up 
our private wishes and will, not simply because we are com- 
pelled to, but because of our loyalty, which will not allow 
that, besides being mightier, the Supreme Powers are not 
higher and better than we. We pray not to that which 
is beneath us, but to what is above us, to what we trust in 
as not deaf or unsympathetic, to what as its offspring we 
cannot regard as without feeling or interest in us. We may 



34 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

not be able to demonstrate this, but our faith, our reverential 
loyalty, would find anything less inconsistent with it. And is 
not faith also bred by these experiences ? When in response 
to the renunciation of self and selfish aim, the identifying 
of our own will with the Supreme, we find a peace and joy 
flowing to us surpassing all we otherwise know, do we not 
seem almost to have insight into the Infinite Heart, and to 
be receiving a Divine benediction ? And when our prayers 
leave us cheerful, hopeful, ready to do and bear with light 
hearts, can we resist the feeling that the Power in all things, 
if we will only consent to it, is working for our good ? And 
the facts that awaken gratitude, — do they not also breed 
faith ? This Universe that bore us, that gave us these won- 
derful natures, that surrounds us with such wealth and luxu- 
riance, — is it not equal to all things ? Nature toils not, nor 
does she spin ; she does not look upon us with human eyes, 
or speak to us in human language : but she noiselessly 
accomplishes what we with all our talking and planning and 
toiling cannot equal ; and the mystery of her working gives 
us strange confidence rather than fear, and makes us pro- 
phetic, expectant of untold and unthinkable results. 

And what is hope but this prophetic aspect of faith ? We 
know not the future, but our natural loyalty and our added 
experience make us hope for all things. Hope is our tribute 
to the inexhaustible resources of the world. We may not 
have what we want now, but we hope we shall in the future • 
or if not that special blessing, then something better. Yes, 
so untiring and persistent is it that when the present life 
seems insufficient to meet and fulfil it, it will assert a future 
life and there await a complete fruition. And the intellect 
may not deny the possibility of such future life. Knowledge 
is of the actual, and here has its limits. As from the inani- 
mate has sprung the animate world, as from the brute crea- 
tion, man, with his mind and freedom, why from the human 
race may there not be a still higher product ? Hope may not 
dogmatically affirm, it may not influence the intellect to say, 



FAITH AND HOPE. 35 

I know ; but where knowledge is not, and may not deny, it 
may be left to its own impulses, and what seems most con- 
sistent with large and generous views of things may cherish. 
But hope must be tempered w r ith a submissive spirit. None 
of the religious sentiments can be inconsistent with one 
another, but must rather confirm one another. Hope cannot 
make demands ; it cannot look up to the Universe and say, 
I want or I deserve, and therefore must have, a future life. It 
is rather such a faith in the bountifulness of the World that 
it looks for the free, spontaneous giving of the hoped-for 
blessing. Yet, if this is not a part of the Supreme ordering, 
if our personal existence is to cease with death, hope will not 
rebel, but cheerfully submit. More than all else, more than 
our private wishes, is to us the actual order ; and hope, even 
though it knew that there would be no future personal exist- 
ence, would still not deny itself, but would go out in generous 
affection and confidence to those who will live on after us 
and to the yet unborn. Hope is not less, but greater, for 
losing its merely personal interest ; only then, indeed, is it 
religious and a part of piety. 

Into the arms, then, of great Nature that bore us w r e con- 
fidingly give ourselves ; heaven and earth and air that gave 
of their own to us receive us again ; the feeling heart, the 
thinking mind, came, w r e know not whence, and they go, we 
know not whither : but beyond the Universe we cannot stray ; 
nothing of us can be lost ; we are still parts of the blessed 
whole, and wherever we shall go, and whatever be and do, 
and though we be in utter ignorance as to this, we yield our- 
selves without murmur or distrust. 






GOD. 

It has perhaps seemed that our manner of referring to the 
object of the religious sentiments was uncertain and vacillating. 
Now it was Nature, now the World or the Universe, now the 
Powers above us or the Supreme Power, now and rarely it 
was God. But this shifting use of terms was not wholly un- 
intentional. Each seemed natural in its connection, yet 
there was no essential reason why one should have been pre- 
ferred to another. It was our purpose to show the natural 
strength of the religious sentiments, even in the absence of 
any elaborate conception of their object ; and moreover the 
terms, to our minds, are really interchangeable, — they denote, 
not different existences, but at most different aspects of the 
same existence. Let us try to state what we mean. 

The sum of being is our starting-point, — what we immedi- 
ately know and what is involved therein, that we hence medi- 
ately know. The grass, the earth, the air, the heavens. 
plant, animal, man, — these, looked at in their connections 
and interdependence, make up the world. But all these 
individual existences are, as such, temporary. They are and 
then cease to be ; even what seems most fixed and abiding — 
the everlasting hills, the heavenly bodies — science teaches us 
are continually changing, and have beginning and ending. 
But we refuse to believe that the sum of existence or force 
can be increased or diminished. There hence arises the dis- 
tinction between the world as it seems and as it really is ; 
between phenomena and reality, manifestation and force. 
Phenomena may change, but real being is not changed ; 
force may have this or that manifestation, but itself is con- 
stant. Hence we may look on the world in two ways : either 
on its phenomenal or its real side, — as a series of manifesta- 
tions, or on the force that is manifested. The manifestations 



GOD. 37 

we know : the force we do not know save in and through the 
manifestations. We may not indeed assert that there is not 
more of force than is contained in the manifestations of 
which we know ; a suspicion and almost a confidence may be 
awakened that there is more, as we reflect that the world is 
larger, means more to us, than to the uncivilized man, and 
that even in recent years new manifestations have been dis- 
covered. But we may not say, nor have we any reason to 
suspect, that there is more of force than is contained in the 
sum-total of manifestations, known and unknown, or that 
would be known to a perfect intelligence. For what we mean 
by force is the ground of a manifestation, and without mani- 
festation we have no reason for supposing the existence of 
force. But since these two aspects of the world are differ- 
ent, the one being outer, as it were, the other inner ; the one 
directly knowable, the other not so knowable ; the one tem- 
porary, the other constant ; the one derivative, the other 
original, — we may legitimately assign to them two different 
names, using the terms Nature, World, Universe, for the one, 
and God or Supreme Power for the other. But we are not 
at liberty, as the natural tendency is, from the two names to 
unconsciously infer two things ; we may not judge of the 
world in one way and of God in another ; we may not sepa- 
rate its laws and his will, or its realities and his designs, or 
speak of it as imperfect and Him as perfect. It is thus that 
reverence for it and Him are the same in kind, that gratitude 
and submission and prayer and faith and hope may have one 
or the other for their object. God is real only in the world, 
though the world may be more than we know, and the world 
is real only in God. But it may be asked, Why do we speak 
of force and God, and not of forces and Gods ? how do we 
know the unity of force ? We answer, In the same way that 
we know of the unity of the world. The world is to us abso- 
lutely continuous ; if there were a break anywhere, there 
would be no way in which to cross it, and our world would be 
simply what was on this side. But by its continuity, we do 



38 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

not mean one of color or visible extension merely, but one 
made real by any sort of manifestation. Our real meaning is 
that force is continuous ; these various manifestations, even 
what are commonly called the various "forces," do not imply 
absolutely distinct realities ; they may possess it in different 
degrees and may regularly manifest it in different ways, yet 
force itself one cannot be said to possess more truly than 
another. But while we seem thus to be justified in the use 
of terms implying unity, we would not overestimate the prac- 
tical importance of such terms. We may speak of the Gods 
or the Supreme Powers, and cherish perhaps as devout senti- 
ment as is possible if we use the abstracter terms. It is only 
important that the terms stand to us for realities, for realities 
above us, on which we are dependent and to which we look 
up with reverence. For religion is not of the whole, but a 
part. It may have seemed to some that in identifying God 
with the sum-total of being, we make religion impossible, 
since we are then a part of God, and religion demands some- 
thing separate from and above us. Stated without qualifica- 
tion, this thought may not be favorable to religion ■ for 
religion is to an object, and must by its nature distinguish. 
But is it not necessary that we be dependent on the object, 
that it have a claim upon us ? What gratitude, what submis- 
sion, could we have to something which was quite aloof and 
unrelated to us ? what meaning in prayer or faith, if our fate 
was in no way bound up with it ? And are not these condi- 
tions met by a consciousness of the part of its relations to 
the whole ? We divide the world into ourselves and what is 
not ourselves, and these two are not equal ; we have but a 
limited control over it, and it has an almost unlimited control 
over us ; it brought us into being, gives us the means by 
which we are sustained, and stands over against us, helping 
or hindering all our lifetime, and in the face of death it is 
not we, but it, that has the mastery. Practically, then, it is 
so great that we may call it supreme, and it is so nearly the 
whole that we may so think and speak of it. For the Not- 






god. 39 

ourselves does not exclude the forces manifested in humanity ; 
our religion is strictly individual, and to each man God is 
manifested not only in nature but in the minds and hearts of 
men about him ■ yes, humanity is to us the highest revelation 
of God. In times of darkness and trial we look instinctively 
for human help and sympathy ; the conscious mind, the gen- 
erous heart, are the best blessings of which .we know ; and 
even at ourselves, regarded in this Divine relation, we may 
not look without a certain reverence. 

We have said that we may not know God as he is in him- 
self ; yet there are certain general attributes and relations to 
us which we need not fail to recognize. He is eternal. This 
and that manifestation may arise and pass away, but he 
cannot be thought of as beginning or ceasing to be. The 
splendor of the grass may have its hour, the heavens may 
wax old as a garment, but growth and decay have no applica- 
tion to the Power which is so manifested ; it lives in the vigor 
and freshness of an eternal youth. He is infinite. We 
cannot conceive of the world as bounded ; for if bounded by 
something, something is beyond, and what we have conceived 
of as the world is not the whole ; ox if by nothing, it is equiv- 
alent to saying that it is not bounded at all. But he is the 
inward and substantial side of the world. Hence further, he 
is omnipresent. There is no part of the world that he is ab- 
sent from, no particle of dust that is too mean for him, noth- 
ing so great of whose greatness he is not the source. We 
may not escape him : though we go to the uttermost parts of 
the sea he is there ; the darkness cannot banish him ; there is 
nothing so complex and seemingly self-centred that is inde- 
pendent of him ; even our strong and self-directing wills are 
but the temporary hiding-places of his power. He is, too, if 
we take the world as the visible side of the great reality, and 
him as the invisible, the Author of the world. We have 
spoken of the world as self-centred, and have said that 
causation does not apply to it as a whole. But by the world 
we meant, not simply the appearances, but also the hidden 



4<D ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

forces ; and it has been the current Christian belief that force 
was as much a creature of God as anything phenomenal, — that 
he is thus apart from the whole. In this sense, we know of 
no iVuthor of the world. But plainly the appearances as 
appearances are dependent, not only upon one another, but 
also upon their hidden ground of reality. The grass depends 
not only on the earth and the air and the sky, but itself and 
they all, considered simply as so much color and extension 
and form, are nothing save as force or reality dwells in them. 
Indeed, if creation be not the origination out of nothing, but 
out of nothing aside from oneself, God may be called Creator 
of the world. There are not materials aside from him, which 
he deftly shapes, but he himself is all, and from the plenitude 
of his own being comes material and form : man is not a 
manufacture, part of him Divine and the rest common earth 
and air, but a growth, and earth and air themselves are con- 
stitutive elements in his Divine descent. 

But as to terms having a more personal meaning, — Lord, 
Father, Providence, the Righteous One,— what may we say ? 
In general, let us call to mind that in refusing to ascribe per- 
sonality to God, we do not assert him to be impersonal. We 
have as little right to call the Power behind all phenomena 
blind, aimless, destitute of sympathy, and purely mechanical, 
as to ascribe to him the opposite human traits. The former 
are terms having meaning and application in the sphere of 
the lower phenomena of the world, and if there be a differ- 
ence they are less applicable to God than the higher terms ; 
for the higher do not so much contradict the lower as supple- 
ment and include them : personal power is mechanical and 
something more. And if God, the ground of the whole series 
of manifestations, is not personal, it is not that he is less, but 
more ; not mechanical, but in some way including both, and 
larger and higher than either. First, as to the term Lord. 
That God is Lord in the sense of being arbitrary sovereign 
apart from the world, giving commands according to his pleas- 
ure, and rewarding or punishing as he likes, is an altogether 



GOD. 41 

unverifiable conception. But is this element of aloofness 
and arbitrariness the fundamental one in the ordinary Chris- 
tian conception? Is it not rather that he is Power, and 
Power controlling us, having laws the action of which we 
cannot escape, and which, whether we harmonize with or dis- 
obey, bring their sure appropriate results ? And if it is these 
certain realities that are at the root of the conception, does 
not our recognition of the same justify us in the use of the 
term ? That our destinies are not in our own hands, that 
there is a Lord and Giver of human life and happiness, may 
perhaps be called the first postulate of religion • it is indeed 
a presupposition without which none of the religious senti- 
ments are possible. But if this term is suggestive of power, 
which need not be personal, is not Father suggestive of love, 
which must be so ? Here again we question whether the per- 
sonal as a purely objective factor is the fundamental one in 
the Christian conception ; whether it is not the good fatherly 
relation in which God stands to us that is really at its basis. 
But whether or no, I see not how we can deny to ourselves 
the use of this term when we consider the actual facts of our 
experience. What God is in himself w r e do not know, but 
the relations which he sustains to each one of us are akin to 
those of a Father to his child. Of what else are the facts 
suggestive that awaken our gratitude ? He begets us, he sus- 
tains us, he gives us more than is needful or than we deserve. 
Though we are evil and unthankful, he does not forget us, 
but by the largeness of his bounty would seem to be ever 
drawing us to himself. It is true that he at times, and not 
rarely, denies us ; but if we submit to him, we come to believe 
that after all the denial was for our good, and that our best 
happiness in life is not in possessing this and that thing 
which we crave, but in the identifying of our will with his. 
We pray to him filially and trustfully, and he answers us at 
times better and more wisely than we prayed. We believe in 
him loyally, we trust for all good at his hands, we resent all 
'unworthy views of his ordering and Providence, and we hope, 



42 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

not only in this life, but for that which is to come. How 
could we act more as children, how could he seem to us more 
as Father, than is in accordance with these facts ? A con- 
scious love such as is in us may or may not direct him in all 
this ; we only know that a love, however wise or great, could 
not guide in wiser or better ways than are actual. But does 
not Providence imply distinctly knowledge and even pre- 
vision ? Etymologically, it may ; but such a consideration 
does not determine real and present meanings. Providence 
is provision, care, or that which supplies such provision and 
care. This provision may be made with consciousness and 
forethought or not ; if not, it may be still real and have all 
the qualities that consciousness could originate. Now we are 
provided for in this world. The Powers above us do more 
for us than we for ourselves. Not only do we receive life 
and sustenance, but for how much of our happiness and suc- 
cess are we indebted to circumstances which we had no hand 
in making ! Sometimes each step in our life seems to uncon- 
sciously prepare for the next • experiences that seem useless 
at the time, and hard to bear, pave the way for rich blessings. 
Providence has this real and practical meaning to most men • 
it is not a metaphysical theory, — it stands for the actual facts 
of the world and of human life, which they are sure are under 
a control not their own. And thus, what does a denial of 
Providence mean but that man is self-sufficient, that he 
orders his own steps, that all the good he has is of his own 
getting ? what is it practically but to deny that there is any 
power beyond himself ? But perhaps most difficult of all is 
to apply to God any moral term ; and not merely because of 
uncertainties of language, but because it is so difficult to con- 
nect with him any moral conception. Morality is to us a 
human product. If society and human experience were not, 
we could little account fer it and the term would have little 

A 

meaning. And recognizing its natural origin and history, it 
is no longer to us a special revelation of the Divine will. 
Righteous and just in one sense we may indeed assert God* 
to be, in that he follows up actions good and bad with their 



god. 43 

appropriate results. However conscious we may be in what 
we do, we cannot be said to design or will all the results that 
follow. The action is ours : the consequences belong to an 
order which we do not control. A good action brings after 
it a train of blessings which often surprise the doer. A 
wrong action is sometimes attended with disastrous results 
before which we simply stand in dismay. But by a righteous 
God we mean one on the side of righteousness. He follows 
up actions with results ; to one class, which we call right, he 
gives happiness ; to another, which we call wrong, sooner or 
later unhappiness. But it may be asked, How is happiness 
any more to God than unhappiness ? do not both go to make 
up the world, and is he not the God of the whole ? Dogma- 
tism is here surely out of place, and our answer may be far 
from satisfactory ; but we may attempt one. We can hardly 
help forming a conception of an end to which any combina- 
tion of forces is tending. As the plant, the tree, the animal, 
seem to have a certain form or type after which they are 
shaping themselves, and to which they, as it were, strive till 
they attain it, so there seems a certain perfect form to which 
man is tending. Man does not know all of his possibilities ; 
with every onward step the consciousness of new possibilities 
is awakened : yet there is a certain goal which more or less 
clearly and fully is ever before him, and in view of which some 
things are desirable and others undesirable. Whether these 
be the whole or not, man feels himself to be formed for hap- 
piness and society ; to these ends he is ever tending, — prog- 
ress he always recognizes to be in the direction of more and 
higher happiness and of more perfect society. And to assert 
that these are after all not ends at all, is to introduce a lie 
into the nature of things, — something which neither reason 
nor piety is willing to do. It is not merely we, but the 
Power of the world, that is moving us on to these ends ; we 
do not make them, but feel them to be there already, and 
that our part is in a conscious harmony with the Divine 
movement. Yet if these are real ends in the nature of things, 
righteousness stands on a different level from unrighteous- 



44 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

ness. and the Power which presses us on to their attainment 
must be differently related to the one and the other. Right- 
eousness is harmony, unrighteousness, when conscious and 
deliberate, is rebellion ; the former brings happiness and 
makes society possible, the latter brings in one way or 
another misery, and tends to the disintegration of society. 
In this way. then, we may not unreasonably entertain the 
conception of God as on the side of righteousness and as 
opposed to wickedness ■ for these ends are not ours merely, 
but his, and to suppose him indifferent to the means whereby 
they are accomplished or hindered in their accomplishment, 
is to place him not above but below the feeblest work of his 
hands. Whether these ends are consciously held and 
planned for, as is the case with ordinary human ends, or 
whether there are such sensations of pleasure and displeasure 
as arise in us when our plans are in the way of success or 
failure, may be an open question • but that the ends exist 
and that the order and movement of things are conspiring to 
their accomplishment, we can hardly doubt as we reflect 
upon our own inward impulses and survey human history. 
It may be asked, Why, if throughout we so hesitate to as- 
cribe personality to God, do we use the personal pronoun in 
speaking of him ? We answer that really it is a matter of 
indifference. When the word " God " is referred to. we nat- 
urally say "he " ; but if Power stands in the immediate con- 
nection, "it " is more natural. The religious sentiments do 
not depend upon the use of one more than the other ; though, 
naturally personifying, as they do, the object to which they 
direct themselves, they may prefer the personal term. But if 
it be meant that we have really no right to the use of this 
term, we must call to mind that we do not deny personality, 
that we regard God as revealed in the whole of his creation, 
that the human personality is not more but less than He. and 
that "it," used generally in reference to phenomena below 
man. is not more but less applicable in accordance with our 
view. 



CONCLUSION. 

Our object in these few pages has not been speculative, 
but practical ; not to meet the intellectual difficulties of the 
age, but to show the naturalness and strength of certain 
religious sentiments, despite the difficulties. Intellectual 
implications these sentiments have, and, though not fully or 
systematically, we have in a measure stated them. Religion 
cannot be separated from knowledge ; it is rather bound up 
with our surest knowledge. Were we not conscious of our 
dependence, we could have none of the religious sentiments. 
But though thus furnishing an occasion, knowledge cannot 
be called the origin of religion ; it is rooted rather in feeling 
and has thus a method of its own, and, we may add, should 
be judged of by a larger logic than is applied to the opera- 
tions of the intellect. If it does not become inconsistent 
with knowledge, it may be allowed its own natural develop- 
ment. 

There is, then, a ready inference as to the manner in which 
we may cultivate religion. It is not so much by purely intel- 
lectual considerations as by an awakening and quickening 
of the moral nature. We may have ever so correct a theory 
of the constitution of the world, and yet, without a sense of 
our dependence and of the world's goodness, we cannot be 
grateful. We may admit the reasonableness of submission, 
yet without the humble spirit we cannot truly submit. We 
may have a favorable theory of prayer, yet, without the 
yearning desire, we cannot pray. Faith and hope may seem 
legitimate to us, but if the loyal, reverent heart is not in us 
faith and hope can find no place. And how, indeed, are 
these feelings so effectually awakened in us as by contact 
with the same as they exist in others? How do we learn to 
love? By studying its nature and origin, by having it im- 



46 OX A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

pressed upon us as a duty, or by actually mingling with 
those whose words and looks are ever manifesting it ? So 
we learn to be grateful by associating with grateful, joyful 
hearts. We learn submission by seeing humble souls about 
us who do and bear their part faithfully, or by hearing or 
reading of the sainted who have gone before. We feel 
desire kindling in us as we know it stirring in the hearts 
and see it lightening the faces of others near us. We catch 
faith and hope as by inspiration from the believing, hopeful 
souls whom a good Providence makes it our lot to meet. 
And from this dependence of feeling on feeling, there comes 
the necessity that religion be social, that we link ourselves 
to one another, and cherish our connection with the current 
of faith and life that comes to us from the past. 

We have entitled this essay, "On a Foundation for Re- 
ligion." We are far from imagining that we have presented 
the whole of religion. In its complete development, to a 
full knowledge and a ripe experience, religion would be 
something far more involved and complex, having wider 
relations to the intellect, and connecting itself in one way 
and another with the whole of human life and duty. We 
have not, indeed, presented the whole of a foundation for 
religion : there are the sentiments of love, of worship, of 
penitence, that have hardly been mentioned ; and righteous- 
ness, almost the fundamental, practical conception of the 
Christian religion, we have hardly more than referred to. 
It is plain, then, that the title did not give rise to the book, 
and we confess that it seems at times a little ambitious ; we 
can only plead the difficulty we have had in finding any 
other not too cumbersome, and may say that the sentiments 
we have discussed are at any rate a large part of the founda- 
tion of religion, and that, as being sentiment, they are dis- 
tinct from the intellectual conceptions in which many would 
find the foundation. There are those at the present time 
whose all-absorbing inquiry is, What is the nature of the 
Deity? Is he conscious or is he not, has he love or is he 



conclusion-. 47 

without it, is he free or is he bound up in the necessitated 
order of nature ? Religion is supposed to hinge upon an 
answer to those questions, and so long as we cannot give an 
affirmative answer we must give up all religious sentiment. 
It was our object to recall from so drear}- a state of mind, 
to show the naturalness of sentiment simply in view of what 
we know, and to lead to a trusting recognition of this, in 
the absence of the ordinary intellectual conceptions, as a 
real foundation for religion. 

And in what has been said we can recognize nothing 
hostile to the essential import of Christianity. Even its doc- 
trinal part we do not deny, but feel simply that it is beyond 
us and without recognizable connection with any sure thing 
which we know ; and it is possible that further knowledge 
and deeper reflection would lead to a substantial belief in it. 
For though the conception of God as an individual apart 
from the world has been the current one, it is not the real 
foundation of Christian theology ; the Power in the world, of 
which the world is simply the manifestation, the outer side, 
the body as it were, maybe personal, — that is, intelligent and 
free, — and such personality, rather than the attendant notion 
of a separate individual existence, is the vital basis of the 
Christian system ; such a conception has not been infrequent 
in the history of Christian thought, and is perhaps at the 
present day gaining prevalence among Christian thinkers. 
But the immediately practical part of Christianity, we have 
not only not denied, but positively affirmed. Christianity, as 
other religions, is a product of the religious sentiments, and 
it contains these in a more highly developed form than we 
elsewhere know of them. If we would cultivate these senti- 
ments, we know not how else we could so well do so as by 
receiving into ourselves the Christian Spirit as it comes down 
to us and is embodied in the Christian Church to-day. All 
along there has been a grateful recognition of the Power 
above us, a trustful submission to the dispensations of the 
Providential Hand, a spirit of prayer linking man in affec" 



48 ON A FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION. 

donate confidence to the Unseen, a faith which looking out 
on the world could say Father, and a hope which neither life 
nor death could destroy. In the Church, we are, as it were, 
bathed by this Divine atmosphere ; out of it, is it not gener- 
ally coldness and hardness and insensibility that we meet 
with ? Indeed, this atmosphere does so infect and give 
color and life to many of the Christian doctrines that we 
can hardly say we disbelieve in them, or make any assertion 
in regard to them, without much qualification. We do not 
assent to the Fatherhood of God, taken as a term for meta- 
physical personality ; yet as a matter of faith and experience, 
and as expressing the real relation in which the world stands 
to us, we do assent to it. The Holy Spirit, viewed as an 
element of an involved theological conception, we are igno- 
rant in regard to ; but what Christian does not mean by 
it first a reality in his heart, and have not we ourselves 
asserted a spirit that may lead us into truth and make us 
holy ? The Divine forgiveness and grace may cause us 
much perplexity, if we seek to settle all the hard problems 
which they have suggested to the mind of the Church ; but 
may we not ask, Are they to this end intended, and do they 
not in any case stand for some of our truest and deepest 
spiritual experiences? Salvation through Christ, — how can 
we deny it, when the first impulses to a religious life some- 
times come from reflection upon his teaching, his life, his 
passion and death ? Is he not still to us the true Son of 
God, in that he possessed a filial consciousness which for 
completeness and depth has, so far as we know, never been 
surpassed, and into the spirit of which we would fain be 
baptized ? 

Christian, then, we may be rightfully called or not : we 
shall not discuss the question. But if not, it must not be 
that we make any hostile attack upon Christianity, but have 
rather retreated to its heart and centre. 



■si 



